Daily harvest as the vegetable garden begins producing. Photo by Angela England

The turning of the growing season to longer, warmer days means lots to do in the garden. Here’s a list of things to keep in mind when it comes to working in the garden this month!

Checklist of June Tasks in the Garden

• Time your watering efforts in the morning before harsh summer suns rises high.
• Deadhead your flowering shrubs like roses, lilacs, and azaleas.
• Be sure newly planted perennials and shrubs get adequate watering.
• Build up your compost pile.
• Set out any other plants you want to plant this growing-year before the worst summer heat begins.
• Put your plant stakes and supports in place if you haven’t already.
• Start seeds for fall season vegetables like broccoli, cabbage, and Brussel sprouts.
• Sow any of the last summer vegetables or herbs such as cucumber, corn and basil.
• Transplant starts of summer vegetables like tomatoes, eggplants and peppers.
• Fertilize your roses, camellias and other heavy feeding shrubs and perennials.

This is the time of year when the first of my vegetables in Oklahoma are beginning to produce at an ever-increasing pace. We check daily for green beans, squash and cucumbers. Keep an eye on your produce that is beginning to grow so that you can get the best yield for your money. Letting vegetables over-rippen will diminish the total amount they product.

Succulent Strawberry Jaw Garden - Photo by Susan Reimer

A recent blog described planting a strawberry jar with my son. But a strawberry jar doesn’t have to be planted with strawberry plants alone. Here are five different ideas for non-strawberry strawberry jars! Each combination describes plant choices for the various levels of the strawberry jar. Salsa Strawberry Jar: Homemade salsa is popular at our house and the only thing better than homemade would be home-grown!

• Top Level – Patio Tomato
• 1 level – Basil Herb Plants
• 1 level – Cilantro Herb Plants
• 1 level – Chives or Onion Starts for Green Onions

Salad Strawberry Jar: Nothing beats a fresh salad right out of the garden and now it’s easier than ever. In a small garden or porch area you can grow an entire salad!

• Top Level – Patio Tomato
• 1 level – Nasturtiums
• 1 level – Lettuce Greens, Mixed
• 1 level – Arugula or Mescula Mixed Greens

Potpourri Strawberry Jar: Fragrant and aromatic plants that can be dried to create homemade potpourri blends.

• Top Level – Scented Geranium
• 1 level – Chocolate or Scented Mint
• 1 level – Lavender
• 1 level – Rosemary

Succulent or Desert Strawberry Jar: A Xeric gardener’s strawberry jar with succulent and drought tolerant plants.

• Top Level – Snowball Cacti
• 1 level – Pachycereus pringlei
• 1 level – Sedum with compact growth like ‘Angelina’
• 1 level – Hens and Chicks

Yellow Flowering Summer Strawberry Jar: The bright warmth of yellow flowers looks really good against the terra cotta color of most strawberry jars. Make it a jar of sunshine for your porch or patio.

• Top Level – Dwarf Coneflower or Coreopsis
• 1 level – Trailing Lantana with yellow blooms
• 1 level – Marigolds in yellow
• 1 level – Yellow miniature roses

Strawberry jars are a great way to get started gardening with quick and easy projects. They can also be a way for children to feel successful in planting their own little space in the garden.

But when I found an old-fashioned strawberry jar at Wal-Mart I knew this was something we could do together. So on impulse I picked it up along with a nine of the $.88 cent strawberry plants and two herbs as well.

Once home it was simple enough to put the strawberry jar together. First we filled the jar with potting soil level with bottom of the first balcony openings and then I showed my son how to remove the strawberry plants which came out of their pots easily. He could get them in the holes almost completely by himself and of course scooping in more soil to the level of the next highest openings was great fun!

We continued adding soil and plants until all the side openings were full. At the top of the jar I planted the herb plants: sweet basil and sweet marjoram just I would in any regular container. Packed in the last of the soil and we were set!

Then, I let my son water the entire thing with the waterwand slowly (I kinked the hose). I knew, even if he didn’t, that watering the strawberry jar too quickly might cause the water to run out of the top level of side openings without seeping down to water the lowest plants. The key to watering strawberry jars is to water often (terra cotta pots can dry out quickly) and water slowly.

The jar is now sitting on a block next to my perennial vegetable bed where it can get plenty of sunshine and I turn the jar every other day to make sure all the plants get enough sun exposure. Already the strawberry plants are growing nicely and beginning to put out delicate looking white flowers that bode well for a future strawberry crop! You can see pictures on my personal Gardening Blog.

Strawberry jars are quick and easy ways to plant a large number of plants, even in a small space. And to have a large amount of fun, even with small kids. And they can be very flexible in terms of what types of plants you plant in your strawberry jar.

What are you waiting for?

Spring bulb border now blooming along the driveway. These are first year blooms so we'll expect more flowers next year.

When I bought two bulk bags of bulbs at a Fall Clearance sale I planted them down the driveway where they would provide temporary color before “mowing” season began and they were mowed to the ground. 50 daffodils and 50 bright red tulips were planted but I spared enough in reserve to plant a dozen or so sprinkled throughout the tiger lily patch.

Seasons of Color – Hide Fading Spring Bulbs With Perennial Foliage

As you can see the tiger lilies are still very small – fractions of the 3-4 feet they will soon reach. The daffodils and tulips are easily seen as bright and cheerful spots of color dotted throughout the foliage. Because I planted these bulbs during the Fall, any damage that may have been done to the tiger lily roots has been compensated for by now.

Tiger lily foliage surrounded by spring blooming bulbs.

As the tulips and daffodils stop blooming I’ll cut off the spent flower stalks to prevent any energy being directed towards seed production. Spring blooming bulbs should be left with leaves collecting energy to store for the winter ahead, which sometimes means unsightly dying foliage in the garden. By layering these spring bulbs with large, summer perennials like these tiger lilies, I will prevent that.

By the time the foliage begins to die, the tiger lilies will be tall enough to hide most of the dying bulb foliage. And soon they will be blooming brightly themselves, once again providing cheerful spots of color around the mailbox.

This spring blooming bulb experiment turned out really well and I’m now looking for low-maintenance fall blooming bulbs or plants that I can mix in with the tiger lilies. They will need to be hardy and aggressive enough to compete. Even if I don’t find anything suitable, the two seasons of blooms, and three seasons of foliage color, provides enough curb appeal in this low-maintenance, high-traffic area.

Rosemary is my favorite fragrant herb.

One of the often overlooked beauties of a garden landscape is the fragrance given by certain landscaping plants. Sometimes in an effort for ornamental or long-lasting flowers, we forget to think about fragrance. But a fragrant flower is somehow MORE of a flower, in my opinion.

So to that end I am writing a series of articles on Suite101 highlighting some of my favorite fragrant flowers and plants that add scent to the home garden throughout the year. Obviously I’m not touching on EVERY plant – so I’ll add to the list of fragrant flowers here.

Spring Flowers With Fragrance

Summer fragrant shrub - roses are a classic!

The article on Suite101 about Fragrant Spring Flowers talks about lilac shrubs, hyacinth bulbs, and violets for shade garden fragrance. This is just the barest beginning of scented spring flowers though. Other bulbs with fragrant flowers include some daffodils, fragrant spring irises, and many heirloom bulbs. Shrubs like wisteria also provide a rich fragrance to the home garden. Other trees with fragrant flowers include crabapples, magnolias and most fruiting trees.

Summer Flowers With Fragrance

The article on Suite101 about Fragrant Summer Flowers discusses the care and use of phlox, roses, sweet alyssum and lavender. Other herbs for a fragrance garden include thyme and scented geraniums. Perennials for a summer fragrance garden include lilies, heliotrope and shrubs like mock oranges.

Fall Flowers with Garden Fragrance

Winter Fragrance Garden Plants

Grape hyacinth bulbs - late spring flowers

Spring is a beautiful time for the garden landscape and presents gardeners with a wide choice of blooming plants including bulbs, shrubs, perennials and annuals to include in your garden. Here are a few favorites.

Spring Blooming Bulbs

One of the first categories of plants many spring gardeners think of are spring blooming bulbs. These can include very early spring flowers like crocus and snowdrops. Then cheerful yellow daffodils make their appearance. Next comes hyacinth, iris bulbs and tulips, which can add color to the garden throughout the entire spring and well into summer.

Spring Blooming Shrubs

Ornamental shrubs add larger foundations to a garden bed, border, or landscape design. For color early in the season try some spring flowering shrubs in your garden. Some favorites of gardeners and landscapers include the fragrant lilac shrubs, the bright yellow forsythia, or the evergreen azalea shrubs. Whatever shrubs you choose be sure to check nursery labels or catalog descriptions for exact bloom times.

Spring Annuals

The bulk of landscaping plants added to gardens are either annuals or perennials. Annuals are plants that grow, flower, seed, and die within the same growing season. Spring blooming annuals include snapdragons, violas, petunias, and impatiens.

Cool Season Perennials - Clemntine Columbine Flowers

Perennials That Bloom in Spring

Gardeners will have a wide variety of plants to choose from for spring color. Perennial plants live for more than a single growing season, sometimes becoming dormant in the winter months only to reappear each spring. For perennial color in the spring weeks try columbine, heuchera, primrose, or dicentra.

Using Spring Plants in Containers

Spring blooming plants often look good in containers, porch rail boxes, or raised planters. This allows you to enjoy the plants near your home where you will see the beauty each day. For spring container plants try pansies or violas, lobelia, and osteopernum.

Lavender is one of my favorite herbs

Last week I was able to pick up several 4″ pots of herbs from a local inexpensive garden nursery – it is a sweet old lady who, I think, starts most of the herbs and plants herself. Lovely plants at fabulous prices.

What herbs did I get?

• Cilantro – a must for homemade salsa
• Parsley – great for adding body to homemade soups
• Sage – both tricolor and regular sage
  

  Dill herb is often used in pickling.

• Oregano – for my homemade spaghetti sauces I’ll make when my tomatoes ripen
• Thyme – a fantastic evergreen, edible ground cover
• Rosemary – one of my favorite herbs ever
• Lavender – a must for the fragrance garden
• Peppermint – because no herb garden is complete without it
• Marjoram – a popular culinary herb
• Chamomile – a must for a tea garden
• Lemon Verbena – highly fragrant and flavorful for tea
• Stevia – a natural sugar substitute that doesn’t raise blood sugar levels
• Dill – for pickling our cucumbers and my mother-in-law’s okra (I hate okra)
• Basil - pasta pesto here I come! Fresh basil is so expensive in the store and so easy to grow in containers

All told, the plants cost me less than $40. Compost and straw for the amending the soil kept me from purchasing dirt that cost more than my plants. The fresh plants and herbs, should I purchase them from the store, would be over $200. So I have saved my family over $150 this year just with my little container herb garden!

Texture: Some bark is lovely because of its unique texture like the Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum) which is a large stately shade tree growing 60-75′ tall and 50-60′ wide. It is hardy in zones 4-8 and the bark ages to a dark gray-brown that contrasts nicely with the snow and adds texture with its long, deep furrows and ridges. Bright golden leaves in the fall make this a lovely addition to the landscape.

The Heritage Birch Tree (Betula bigra ‘Heritage’) is hardy in zones 3b-9 and grows 40-60′ tall and 40-60′ wide. The texture of its bark is unique with the beautiful silvery outer bark peeling back in large patches to reveal a creamy tan inner bark. It is also another tree with brilliant fall foliage.

The Winterberry Euonymus (Euonymus bungeanus ‘Pink Lady’) is a shrub that grows only 15′ tall and 8-12′ wide in zones 4-7. Weeping branches hold bright pink berries, yellow fall foliage, and deeply textured winter bark make this an excellent year-round specimen.

This excerpt is part of the ebook Using Plants to Create Winter Interest, over 30 pages detailing the 6 ways to hold interest in your garden landscape during the dormant season. The book is $3.99 and available by clicking the photo or link.

Pleasing or interesting silhouetted plants include:

• Weeping Trees and Shrubs
• Unusual Branch Patterns
• Pyramidal/Upright Growth Habit
• Rounded/Horizontal Growth Habit

Adding Weight Generally speaking, evergreens and deciduous trees with stout, heavy limbs add weight to a garden space. Contrast that with thinner branched, deciduous trees whose structure and silhouettes are more delicate and light. Try to maintain a pleasing balance in the garden by taking these tendencies into consideration. If you planted one small deciduous tree in front of a mass of large evergreens it might end up looking pathetic and sickly in the winter. On the other hand, a group of them together could create a pleasing interlacing of delicate branches that compliment each other.

Focal Points Be aware of the surrounding sky line when it comes to focal point silhouettes. Some plants, such as a beautiful weeping tree, or the twisted branches of the ‘Harry Lauder’s walking stick’ tree, should be planted where they can be enjoyed singly. Otherwise their pleasing shapes are obscured by trees at the same level planted around them. Planting several in a row would detract for the overall shape and confuse the eye. Whereas under-planting one with small evergreens or winter flowers would help accent it, without detracting from the unique shape, which would stand out against the sky beautifully.

Snowcatchers Another use of branch shape and structure in the winter garden is to look for branching structures that will catch the snow and look fantastic doing it. The tiered-branching structure of the dogwoods are always pleasing to the eye, as are upright evergreens. Many large shade trees like the Black Oak we had in our backyard in Texas, look great holding snow through its branches. I especially am pleased with the darker colored bark that contrasts with the white snow although there are other ways to use bark for winter interest.

The copyright of the article Bright Berries for Winter Gardens in Plants & Bulbs is owned by Angela England. Permission to republish Bright Berries for Winter Gardens in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

This excerpt is part of the ebook Using Plants to Create Winter Interest, over 30 pages detailing the 6 ways to hold interest in your garden landscape during the dormant season. The book is $3.99 and available by clicking the photo or link.